Unit 1: Contextualize Yourself

Length: 1000 words Draft Due: 1/15, to Blackboard Whole Class Review: 1/21

ENGW3314 Spring 2014

Audience: Your peers and Dr. Musselman Peer Reviews Due: 1/22 Final Due: 1/27 to Blackboard by 8 pm

We sum up this assignment in one short sentence: Write an artist statement. And, ultimately, your goal in this assignment is to write a good, compelling account of who you are and how you fit into your field right now. However, the term artist statement is pretty loaded and may not be entirely appropriate for all of the disciplines represented in this class. So, we'll call this paper an intellectual biography. We'll need to define some terms I'll mark them with an asterisk and we can discuss them in class. You'll write an essay* in which you describe yourself as a member or member-in-training of your field and locate yourself in the landscape of your field. To set yourself in the context of your field, youll need to consider a few things: the theory that has shaped your education in that field, the active theories in that field, and your attitudes toward those theories. Youll also need to be able to describe your work/approach to work. I want you to begin by carefully considering theory each of you is being trained/educated in your particular field at a particular theoretical moment in the development of that field. Each professor at NU has her/his own theoretical and practical backgrounds. Some of you may even have been explicitly introduced to the theory underlying the courses and coursework that you've been exposed to. For example, many of those working in arts, media, and design are still operating under the principles of postmodernism *. Others would say they've moved on to post-postmodernism (or metamodernism or hypermodernity or digimodernism . . .). What are the theoretical underpinnings of your education? [HINT: Northeastern is (in)famous for being a practice/experience-centric, not theory-centric, school How do we figure that out? You might begin by looking up postmodernism. Do the descriptions match with the coursework you've had? You could inquire into this in a number of other ways as well: talk to a professor/ instructor in your field; look carefully at your textbooks, especially at Introductions and Forewords; examine the description of your department or major or program on the NU website . . . You could use the web, especially the websites of professional and scholarly organizations in your field or of well-respected blogs in your discipline. After you figure out what sort of theoretical background is informing your education, consider how this sits with you. Do you sympathize with this theory? Do you feel that it is too restrictive? Or is it working well and leaving room for researchers/creators/workers to be creative and innovative? Does the theory seem stuck in the past? Or does it leave room for progress, learning, and discovery in the future? For many in arts, media, and design, training in their field comes both from formal situations at educational institutions (like a university) and from less formal situations, like exposure to exhibits and performances, actual practice in the field/studio, or participation in online activities (blogs, games, game jams, online sharing of work or tutorials, among others). What is the balance in your training? Are you, for example, getting most of your digital arts or architecture or game training or writing instruction in school or out of school? Or are you getting different things from different places? (If so, tell us about that.) Artist statements/intellectual biographies often include such things as: What is your work about? What are your goals? your philosophy? What issues does your work explore? How do your life experiences fit in to your work? How does your personality influence your work? What medium* do you work in (or want to work in) most? If you have a particular work process,* what is it and how did it develop? Where do you think your work fits in your field today? What similar artists/designers/architects/game designers (and so forth) are out there? Does your work appropriate or use the work of others? Who? What are your inspirations? Answer these questions (perhaps not all of them apply to you) briefly at first. In fact, Id even recommend answering them on a sheet of paper. Well talk about why on Friday.

At this point, you've pinned down the theoretical basis of your education in your field and you've considered your own attitude toward your own work. Now it's time to think about arrangement and structure: how can you arrange this so that it does not sound like the 18 other people in this class and the hundreds of others in your major? This is also the time to consider tone, format, style, use of humor (or lack of humor): all vary according to the exact impression the artist (scholar) wants to make. So, what impression do you want to make? Can you find examples or models on the web that might help? Now, write your paper. A few resources you might find interesting or useful: Here's what some bloggers have to say about these kinds of contextualizing essays in art and design: In Defense of the Artist Statement: http://hyperallergic.com/69378/in-defense-of-the-artist-statement/ What is a Designer Statement? (Part 1 of 6): http://blogs.walkerart.org/design/2011/12/05/what-is-a-designerstatement-reinfurt-goggin-dixon/ What is a Designer Statement? (Part 3 of 6 this one had some very interesting answers): http://blogs.walkerart.org/design/2011/12/07/what-is-a-designer-statement-part-3-ponik-lupton-eatock-nelsonyegir/ Possibly interesting blogs and online magazines (just a selection there are thousands!): Eye Magazine: http://www.eyemagazine.com/ and a past article on writing: http://www.eyemagazine.com/opinion/article/what-has-writing-got-to-do-withdesign On Typography: Designer Daily: http://www.designer-daily.com/28-great-typography-blogs-websites-5032 On Architecture: Life of an Archtect: http://www.lifeofanarchitect.com/the-best-architectural-websites/ New Media: Lawrence Lessigs blog: http://www.lessig.org/blog/ Mashable: http://mashable.com/ Augmented Social Cognition:!http://asc-parc.blogspot.com/